Yes! Tom Hiddleston, Tilda Swinton, Jim Jarmusch AND vampires! Only Lovers Left Alive opens in Montreal on Friday, April 25

Tom Hiddleston and Tilda Swinton portray vampires named Adam and Eve in this poster for the Jim Jarmusch film Only Lovers Left Alive. The poster hangs in the lobby of Montreal's Excentris cinema on St Laurent Blvd.

Tom Hiddleston and Tilda Swinton play vampire lovers in the Jim Jarmusch film Only Lovers Left Alive. Swinton is the ethereal, calm, wise, 3,000-year-old Eve; Hiddleston is the slightly scruffy Adam, already world weary at a relatively young 500 years old.

North American fans of the actors and the director have been waiting (impatiently) for a long time to see Only Lovers Left Alive. The film was shown at the Cannes Film Festival a bit more than one year ago, then at 29 (!!!) other festivals around the world, including Toronto’s TIFF. In some countries, it went into general release months ago; some places got it before Christmas. It’s showing in the U.S. now, and comes to Montreal April 25. Enfin!

Exteriors were shot in Tangiers, Morocco, where Eve hangs out with undead playwright Christopher Marlowe (John Hurt) and Detroit, where Adam makes music; interiors were done on a soundstage in Berlin. (Many of Hiddleston’s fan travelled to Berlin and Detroit in hopes of seeing him, they waited for hours outside the studio or his hotel, for photos and autographs, or to give him gifts of chocolate or artwork. Hiddleston is now in Toronto, for Guillermo del Toro’s Crimson Peak.)

Even though Adam’s character is morose, at least part of the time, it seems that the film has funny, light-hearted parts, too. Interviews indicate that Hiddleston and Swinton very much enjoyed working with each other and with Jarmusch. Mia Wasikowska, as Eve’s younger sister, and Anton Yelchin as Adam’s friend, assistant (or intern?) are among the other actors in the film.

Tom Hiddleston shares a laugh with director Jim Jarmusch and Tilda Swinton at the Only Lovers Left Alive press conference during the Cannes Film Festival on May 25, 2013. (Michael Buckner/Getty Images)

By now, I have read many enthusiastic reviews from professional critics, online friends, and one real-life one, and I just can’t wait to see the film!
Here are excerpts from a few reviews that I Iike. There are lots more on the Internet.

.Jordan Hoffman at Film.com: “Some jokers out there will tell you that Jim Jarmusch’s new film “Only Lovers Left Alive” is about vampires. Those are the types of people the vampires in this movie roll their eyes at. . . this film really is about artists – committed artists who live and suffer at the fringes of society. They have intense knowledge about certain things, like the Latin names of all plants and animals, or knowing the exact date a guitar is made just by touching it, but they live in a shadow world. They can only exist at night, and even then it is just a shuffle between occasional creation and getting their next fix. . . “Only Lovers Left Alive” is an exhibit A example of how to use style to enhance substance, not overwhelm it.. . . Only Lovers Left Alive” is, in my opinion, the next great midnight classic. Much like its characters, it has no business being out in the daylight.”

.Scott Tobias at The Dissolve.com: “The brilliance of Jim Jarmusch’s Only Lovers Left Alive lies in what it doesn’t do, as much as what it does. In a marketplace flush with vampire movies, Jarmusch isn’t interested in supernatural horror, romantic mythology, or eternal love as the ultimate expression of teenage infatuation. . . What primarily interests Jarmusch about vampires is the basic fact that they’ve been around so long. . . they’ve gained wisdom and perspective on history, literature, and culture that ordinary humans can’t by nature achieve. They’ve also developed the odd habits and obsessions of people who have lived on their own for a long time. . Only Lovers Left Alive accomplishes the neat trick of reinventing a moribund genre as a distinctly Jarmuschian hangout movie.”

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Jessica Kiang at the Playlist:“Only Lovers Left Alive,” . . . finds the maverick filmmaker on playful, referential and mischievous form. . . It’s an offbeat, fun, and frequently very funny film, lifted out of disposability by some wonderfully rich production design, music cuts and photography, and by the cherishable performances of the leads.”

Kiang says Swinton is “probably as good at being funny as she is at everything else, but is so rarely given the chance.”

In the video below, Tom Hiddleston has a nice, long (27-minute) chat about Only Lovers Left Alive with the CBC’s Jian Ghomeshi.

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